This invention relates to the cleaning of floors and more particularly, to an improved apparatus and a method for rinsing and sanitizing a mop utilized to clean floors and other surfaces.
The critical importance of maintaining institutions, such as hospitals, nursing homes and the like, as clean as possible has long been recognized. An important aspect of cleaning such institutions is the cleaning of the floors so as to assure that bacteria thereon are killed and are not permitted to spread infections among the patients.
In the past, the equipment typically used for cleaning floors has consisted of a mop, a mop bucket and a mop wringer mounted on the bucket. Conventionally, during normal usage, the mop bucket is initially filled with "fresh" cleaning solution. The mop is placed in the bucket to be soaked with cleaning solution, is wrung partially dry in the wringer so that the excess or expelled solution in the mop is returned to the bucket, and is then used to mop an area of the floor, e.g., a patient's room. The "dirty" mop is then replaced in the bucket, is resoaked with cleaning solution and is again wrung partially dry in the bucket mounted wringer. This soaking, wringing and using cycle must be periodically interrupted to empty the "dirty" solution in the bucket and to add "fresh" cleaning solution to the bucket.
This conventional method of rinsing a mop used for mopping floors has a number of drawbacks or problems from the standpoint of the efficient, sanitary cleaning of the floors. First, after a floor area has been mopped, the mop is returned to the bucket where bacteria picked up by the mop from the floor may contaminate the cleaning solution in the bucket. Since the cleaning solution in the mop bucket is carried on the wet mop to each successive floor area to be cleaned, the risk of spreading bacteria, and thus infection, increases with each return of the mop to the mop bucket. Second, since the cleaning solution must be changed frequently, a substantial portion of a worker's time must be expended changing the cleaning solution, rather than mopping. Third, absent continuous supervision, supervisory personnel cannot be assured that the cleaning solution will be properly prepared and changed with the appropriate frequency. If it is not, the risk of spreading bacteria, and thus infection, is greatly magnified.
In recognition of the problem of unsanitary conditions caused by a worker using the conventional equipment and method of rinsing a mop, state and Federal regulatory agencies have been recommending, and sometimes requiring, the usage of two mop buckets in an attempt to solve this sanitation problem. Under these recommendations and requirements, one of the buckets contains "fresh" cleaning solution and the other is used for the "dirty" or contaminated cleaning solution. However, even when these recommendations and requirement are followed, sanitation is not greatly improved. This is because after the "dirty" solution has been returned or wrung into the other bucket, the mop must then be dripped into the "clean" solution in the one bucket. Thus any bacteria picked up by the mop during cleaning will, as a practical matter, contaminate the "fresh" cleaning solution in the other bucket. In addition, the use of two buckets greatly increases the non-productive time required to empty and re-fill the buckets. And because as a general rule the workers who are doing the mopping are unskilled, proper use of the two mop buckets and the required frequent changing of the "fresh" and "dirty" solutions is even less assured with two mop buckets than with one. Hence this suggested solution to the sanitation problem is not considered satisfactory.